This article was posted on Friday, 29th March 2013
I love Lego, so I had to relink to this cabinet. As I said in the original link post, a lot of these Ikea Hackers posts are woeful, but this almost looks like an official Lego product.
I don't think I could make up my mind between a contemporary and a traditional home. I'd probably juxtapose the two together, like this home in the UK.
I relinked this home simply because I love the wooden pathway up to it. So nice.
I called this one of my favourite home exteriors in a while, so I had to relink to it. I love all the different cladding materials and the different directions the material lines take. The interiors are really nice too, especially the dining table 'chandelier'.
This is a striking defensive tower, renovated in Spain. On a barren landscape, in, what looks like, blistering heat, this stands, monolith-like. I love the cape around the staircase.
This article was posted on Friday, 22nd March 2013
I love these photos on Flickr, especially the fact that the US National Archives are on Twitter. THis particular photo set is of the interior of the White House when it was completely gutted: “The decision was made to move the Trumans across the street into the Blair House for three years while the White House underwent a complete reconstruction within its original exterior walls.”
You don't often see a blind-printed label on food or drink, but this is special beer. It was brewed by the design company Equator Design, in their Sydney offices (!) for their clients. The wooden cases that house them, also built by members of the company, are a beautiful complement to them.
A gigantic monolith of a home, that sits amongst the trees on the side of a Mexican mountain. I'd say the masses of concrete keep it cool in summer and warm in winter.
I really like this rebrand of a football crest. It keeps the 'feel' of a crest, but is contemporary and so much slicker than the previous crest.
This fan that sits on top of a wood-burning stove, uses the heat generated from the stove to create an electrical circuit and spin the fan, distributing the rising heat from the stove throughout the room. I really love this idea, but shudder at the thought of a child putting their hands near it when in full flight...
This article was posted on Thursday, 21st March 2013
Whilst I have some free time between jobs (yes I am looking for interesting opportunities- let me know!) I decided to redesign the local business/organisation directory I made about four years, the Athy Directory.
I had built it to scratch my own itch- a lot of small local businesses had no web presence, which makes it very difficult to Google them. Things have changed now and there are many more of them online, but I think my directory still stands up.
There are plenty of little bits and pieces that I still need to do, which I will get 'round to doing soon, but at the moment, these are the elements I've been working on.
As with any project that is your own, I spent too much time going back and forward with different designs. Mobile devices are important but I didn't really want to end up creating a heap of media queries (I wanted to Keep It Simple, See?) In the end I decided to take the Zeldman route and design a site that essentially looks the same regardless of device (although I still used a few media queries but not many.) The Athy colours are red and white, so I wanted to use them (previously blue and orange for some reason.)
I really wanted an autocomplete function, it's almost ubiquitous with search, so I set about it. I thought I could do it easily enough, but in the end I used an Autocomplete JQuery plugin, which worked great. As I developed the backend system, it was easy for me to output a JSON file with all businesses, organisation and categories that people may be searching for. This feature ended up being much easier than I expected.
With the previous version, I had pulled the Yahoo weather feed in, via RSS, for Athy. I wanted to continue this providing useful information, so I linked to the Wikipedia page and location on Google Maps.
I had worked on an analog clock mechanism (because I'm a wannabe horologist) in a previous project, and as it wasn't being used anymore, I decided to put one on this homepage. It's an adapted version of this clock code. It's pretty simple, my contribution to it, was having it independent of the clock on the visitor's computer.
I think I'll have to explain this in a separate blog post.
Initially I tried a sponsorship program with local businesses to cover hosting costs etcetera, but more time was spent chasing payment. Google Adsense allows me to cover costs with no work. Pity the ads are always so bloody ugly.
I have both a Facebook account and page for the Directory, so I felt I needed to put a Like button on the page. Yes, that's it, the goofy element that always looks out of place. I'm beginning to accept the role FB has to play online. I accept it but I don't 'like' it.
I built the backend using PHP, which has held up fine. I used the Sphider indexing system to create a fast search. It's ok and does the job. Athy is a small town so there's never a heavy load on traffic or visitors, and as I manually put in new businesses, it's secure from bad people.
Please visit the site and let me know what you think.
This article was posted on Friday, 15th March 2013
I love the work of DKNG, I could watch their process videos over and over. This behind-the-scenes blog post details their recent Ice Cream Truck poster. Really great, love those display Ice Cream signs.
Everybody loves the reuse of shipping containers, it's fun to see what people do with the constraint of the shipping container shape. This house doesn't look like it, but it's made of shipping containers.
I linked to the one example of this guy's work, but you should check out his whole portfolio. Stellar work.
This is one behemoth of a concrete home, but the interiors are really nice. I especially like the open lounge area that almost is part of the garden. Too much concrete for my tastes, but I'd live in it regardless (a lick of paint would be need though...)
This beer label is more like a car 'wrap'. Really nice colour palette, nice textures, very interesting design overall.
This article was posted on Friday, 15th March 2013
I studied Shakespeare's Julius Caeser in school and, to this day, I still enjoy it. I think this mostly has to do with how a large number of quotes and references from it, have made their way into popular culture.
Case in point, you may see references to the Ides of March online today, March 15th. This was the day (according to Julius Caeser) that Caeser was assassinated. He was warned by a soothsayer to “Beware the Ides of March”.
I've listed some more memorable quotations below, I'm sure you've come across them at some point.
“Et tu, Brute?”
“It is the bright day that brings forth the adder
And that craves wary walking.”
“Of all the wonders that I have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”
“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!”
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar”
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
“As he was valiant, I honor him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him.”
Shakespeare references are always fun, especially when used in a modern context. I particularly like the Macbeth reference in Collateral.
